the butterfly effect

yesterday was a successful day of photography.

someone recently asked me what the secret to photography is. i responded with one thing. but now that i think about it, i’ll just give some suggestions.

1: check your edges and check your corners. if you ever want to become good at photography you need to do this in order to train yourself to be mindful of composition. move around; your first instinct from your eye’s perspective is likely not the best angle because you’re likely just too consumed by the subject matter. which brings me to:

2: prime lenses. zoom lenses hamper you more than anything. with a prime lens, utilizing the above suggestion forces you to move around to get it right. now, chances are good that while you’re scurrying around and trying to find “the shot”, you’ll be checking your edges and corners and notice something else in the composition that enhances it. which brings me to:

3: quit thinking about the one interesting aspect of your observence before your press the shutter. a good picture has a wonderful gestalt, and that includes the background elements. QUIT THINKING THAT BACKGROUND IS NEGATIVE SPACE OR UNIMPORTANT. which brings me to:

4: understand a little about color theory. you are capturing light and every aspect of any photograph is wholly and ultimately comprised of the interrelationship of various colors. unless you’re shooting in black and white…which brings me to:

5: highlights and mid-tones and shadows create shape, and they are the only thing that will afford any depth to your image. pay very close attention to contrast and value and don’t waste a shot if you think it’s flat or too contrasty in regards to the subject matter. which brings me to:

6: only one out of every sixteen pictures you take will be interesting. so if you’re dead-set on capturing something, take sixteen pictures of it from many different angles and distances and exposures and you might have something worthwhile in there. that said:

7: EXPERIMENT. you know that meter reading that thought you should techinally be shooting on 100 speed due to lighting? well, the subject matter might lend itself better to the grittiness of 3200 speed. screw what the reading says all of the time and there is no baseline to any given situation besides integration of that which you seek to photograph and that which you have equipped yourself with and that which you can control. which brings me to:

8: use manual focus. focusing is the only way to direct a viewer’s attention and is one of the largest components directing the eye around an image and it truly sets out to describe the photographer’s intention towards the chosen compositional elements. *breathes in* if you’re taking a picture of someone standing right in front of you with their arm fully outstretched to the point where their finger is touching your lens, consider the background elements and their gesture and decide where to focus: on their fingertip? on their hand? on their arm hairs? on their eyes? on the stuff happening behind them? which brings me to:

9: your f1.8 is cool and all, but not all the time. close that puppy down once in a while and present the viewer with crisp worlds that their eyes can’t see. repetition is a major visual element and sometimes a seashore covered in birds is more important that the two feet of focus your gaping lenshole is capable of, and oh my god! they’re all taking off at once! which brings me to:

10: shutter speed is not up to you ever again. light owns you. when you consider all the above and employ the above gods of image you will find that shutter speed is the prescient one. my advice: buy a heavy camera, you’ll be able to take take handhelds at half second exposures. oh yeah, and throw away your anti-shake crap: that stuff is for snapshot cameras, not photographers.

— superdoofus-stratodrive

Nice post.  Reminders are always handy… 

I long for manual focus.  Then again, I’m just a poor beginner.  Although having grown up in a family of photographers, to the point where it took me a VERY long time to pick up a camera due to overkill and being forced to pose ad nauseam, one thing that stands out to me here is to take a LOT of photos of your subject.  In the “olden days”, only professional photographers could afford to do this, due to the volume of film wasted…. but now there is no excuse.  It’s the only way to get a decent shot most of the time.

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